Virtual machines have emerged as one of the fundamental technologies that enterprises use in their data centers and elsewhere to process workloads, manage data, and provide services. A host hardware platform uses virtualization software to create and host any number of virtual machines. A virtual machine is a software abstraction of a real computer system. A host hardware platform may host dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of virtual machines. It is important for the enterprise to have a backup infrastructure to backup these virtual machines since data plays a crucial role in today's information-driven society.
The number of virtual machines in an environment can vary based on demand. The traditional backup infrastructure, however, is generally static. For example, during an initial deployment, a backup administrator may configure the backup infrastructure with a sufficient amount of resources to backup the deployed virtual machines according to a particular time window or other objective. These backup resources, however, do not change in response to the changing number of virtual machines in the environment. As a result, in some cases, there may be an insufficient level of resources to meet the backup objectives. In other cases the backup infrastructure may be overprovisioned with resources which is wasteful.
Therefore, there is a need for improved systems and techniques for efficiently managing the backup of virtual machines.
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